At the Public Hearing on September 14th, 2022 I delivered the following remarks about Traffic Safety.  You can also view the meeting at Town Council Public Session – Sep 13th, 2022 (granicus.com) (my remarks begin at the 01:20:50 mark).

Madam Mayor, Members of Council, and Mr. Ashton,

My name is Stevan Porter and I reside at 905 Vine St in Herndon.  As a candidate for Council, I have been spending time talking with members of our community and many people have been raising concerns about traffic safety particularly on our smaller, neighborhood streets.  My own street is a small, non-conforming street with a 25 mph speed limit but every day I see vehicles easily doing 15 – 20 mph above that.  Like much of Herndon, many of the houses here have children and the street has significant pedestrian and bike traffic.  I fear that it is only a matter of time before we have an accident like we have recently seen in other parts of town.

I believe the most immediate viable option would be for increased enforcement with high level visibility of officers obviously conducting speed checks on the smaller neighborhood streets.  This could be made more effective if combined with a public awareness campaign similar to how DUI checkpoints, anti distracted driving campaigns, and seat belt enforcement are sometimes run in various localities.  In other words get the word out that if you speed on Herndon’s residential streets you will be ticketed and back that up with actual enforcement.

Obviously, this is not a perfect solution since we have limited law enforcement resources and they cannot be everywhere at once.  So more permanent traffic calming devices will be needed.  Your Speed signs, unusual speed limits, additional stop signs, rumble strips, speed bumps, speed humps, and other emerging techniques should all be considered to find the best fit for specific neighborhood streets and situations.

I also wanted to comment briefly on the impact on emergency vehicles.  I have been operating and training individuals to operate emergency vehicles for 20 years.  The legal standard for operating in emergency mode – i.e. with lights and sirens – is that “due regard for the safety of persons and property” must always be observed.  Emergency vehicles should not be traveling our smaller neighborhood streets at high speed and – depending on the specific design and frequency of deployment – speed calming measures can be implemented that will not have a significant detriment to overall response times.  Yes, we would need to slow down for such devices but national standards as well as specific policies in most local departments already require we come to complete stops at any red lights or stop signs.  Slowing down for an occasional speed control device is not significantly different.  In Leesburg where I do the majority of my paramedic work, there are a number of neighborhoods and streets that have speed bumps or speed humps.  I am sure we can find workable solutions here as well.

Obviously these are complex topics and three minutes is not much time to discuss them.  If you would like to discuss further, my contact information will be included with the written comments supplied to the Town Clerk.

Thank you.

Stevan Porter